Liability
Locked Account.
Thomas Jefferson said: "It is more dangerous that even a guilty person should be punished without the forms of law than that he should escape."
If you are going to continue supporting the death penalty, then you MUST morally justify a case where ONE single innocent human being is put to death in error...
You'll have to find SOME grounds to justify it...OTHERWISE it is premeditated MURDER.
What statists like Liability are oblivious to is that our justice system, from arrest to sentence is fraught with human foible, error and prejudice (not just skin color. i.e. economic) ANYONE can pontificate on punishment of a guilty person, BUT you need to be VERY skeptical on how that guilt is arrived at.
Judges and District Attorneys are ELECTED officials...they often run on their "tough on crime" record...which MEANS public perception trumps the truth.
There are numerous cases where a conscientious detective uncovers evidence after someone has been convicted of a crime proving they have the wrong person, only to find themselves being harassed and threatened and told to let it go... DA's and Judges NEVER want to admit they convicted the wrong person...they put themselves, their reputation and their career ahead of justice and truth.
**********
"Twenty years have passed since this Court declared that the death penalty must be imposed fairly, and with reasonable consistency, or not at all, and, despite the effort of the states and courts to devise legal formulas and procedural rules to meet this daunting challenge, the death penalty remains fraught with arbitrariness, discrimination, caprice, and mistake." U.S. Supreme Court Justice Harry A. Blackmun, February 22, 1994
Factors contributing to the arbitrariness of the death penalty:
* Ninety-five percent of death row inmates cannot afford their own attorney. Court-appointed attorneys often lack the experience necessary for capital trials and are overworked and underpaid. In the most extreme cases, some have slept through parts of trials or have arrived under the influence of drugs and/or alcohol.
* Prosecutors seek the death penalty far more frequently when the victim of a homicide is white than when the victim is African-American or of another ethnic/racial origin.
* Co-defendants charged with committing the same crime often receive different punishments, where one defendant may receive a death sentence while another receives prison time.
* Approximately two percent of those convicted of crimes that make them eligible for the death penalty actually receive a death sentence.
* Each prosecutor decides whether or not to seek the death penalty. Local politics, the location of the crime, plea bargaining, and pure chance affect the process and make it a lottery of who lives and who dies.
* GEOGRAPHIC ARBITRARINESS: Since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976, 80% of all executions have taken place in the South. The Northeast accounts for less than 2% of executions.
Death Penalty and Arbitrariness
This leads me to a question.....the judges and jury that convicts someone who is later found to be innocent, but has been put to death - they should be suffering the consequences for the innocent person's death. It IS premeditated murder afterall. They should be standing trial then as well imo.
Jamie
That's ridiculous and you sound quite silly for having offered such an inane comment. "Murder," as most words do, has an actual meaning attached to it.
A guilty verdict which turns out to have been in factual error and a death penalty sentence predicated on that verdict, issued pursuant to law, is not even remotely akin to the meaning of "murder" (premeditated or otherwise).